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Refugees sailing for unity in Hobart

Felicity OgilvieUpdated
Tue 27 Nov 2012, 8:35 PM AEDT

A group of refugee high school students have sailed around Hobart's Derwent River today in a program designed to help them integrate with locally born students. The refugees were allowed to invite a locally born buddy along for the trip and many new friendships were formed onboard.

Transcript

MARK COLVIN: A group of refugee children have spent the day sailing in Hobart.

The high school excursion was organised to give the refugees a chance to develop friendships with local students.

The 20 refugees from places like Nepal, Ethiopia and Thailand each chose a locally born companion to take on board the sailing ship.

Felicity Ogilvie reports from Hobart.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The Lady Nelson is an old style sailing ship, a replica of a British boat built 200 years ago that usually sails slowly around Hobart's Derwent River.

Today it was full of excited children from all around the world.

Abdul from Burma smiles and his eyes sparkle when he talks about the best part of his day.

ABDUL: I learnt how to drive boat a little bit and (laughs) it was good. I know how to drive now a little bit.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The children were literally shown the ropes by Rob Thomas from the Tasmanian Sail Training Association.

ROB THOMAS: The kids love it. They queue up to have a go at steering the boat and we always encourage them to get involved. We had them hauling on the lines, we had them releasing lines. We had them helping with the sails. They wanted to wear lifejackets; the whole thing.

FELICITY OGILVIE: It's was the first time sailing for some of the refugees who recently arrived from places like Nepal, Thailand and Ethiopia.

Making new friends and eating food together were highlights for some of the refugees.

REFUGEE: It was fun being with friend and teacher having fun, eat together, joking, some fun.

FELICITY OGILVIE: Each refugee invited a student from their high school who was born in Australia to join them on the trip.

Mitchell Eddington is a year 8 student who was picked to be a buddy.

MITCHELL EDDINGTON: You basically learn about the other's cultures like where they're from and like their language.

FELICITY OGILVIE: Did you make any new friends today?

MITCHELL EDDINGTON: Yes, I did.

FELICITY OGILVIE: And where are they from?

MITCHELL EDDINGTON: Nepal and Thailand and all that.

FELICITY OGILVIE: And what did you learn about their countries?

MITCHELL EDDINGTON: Just that it can be really dangerous where they can come from.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The children go to Cosgrove High School in Hobart's north where a quarter of the students were born overseas.

Amanda Cummins works at the school teaching English to the refugees.

AMANDA CUMMINS: It used to be called the ESL but now we call it English Additional Language because a lot of our students can speak more than one language so they're not learning their second.

In fact Abdul, who you interviewed earlier, can speak nine languages.

FELICITY OGILVIE: So you've had a very mixed group on the boat today. What's the purpose of it?

AMANDA CUMMINS: Basically a great opportunity for them to form some good relationships and make some new friends and for the mainstream students to get an understanding of their cultural backgrounds and perhaps some of the difficulties that they've had with their journeys to get here to Hobart, Tasmania.

FELICITY OGILVIE: Rob Thomas noticed how the children quickly formed new friendships onboard.

ROM THOMAS: When they walk along the wharf here at the start, they were in little friendship groups, which is normally the case, and they came on board and they huddled in these little groups.

But by the end of the day you probably saw them up on the bow there, when photos were taken, they were all, had their arms around one another and that's only after three hours and they were all laughing and giggling and carrying on which is what we like to see.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The ship became very quiet when the children got off; they were still talking loudly, laughing and chatting as they walked to their school bus.